Inspiration

Love lit a fire in my chest, and anything

that wasn't love left: intellectual

subtlety, philosophy

books, school.

All I want now

to do or hear

is poetry.

- Rumi

translated by Coleman Barks

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The Christian mystic and teacher, Thomas Merton, wrote that: "One cannot...enter into meditation...without a kind of inner upheaval. By upheaval I do not mean a disturbance, but a breaking out of routine, a liberation of the heart from the cares and preoccupations of one's daily business."

When I want to break my routine, I may visit my garden, or I may turn to my bookshelf. Over the years, I have found reading poetry to be one of the most rewarding and practical spiritual disciplines. A friend of mine recently told me that she appreciates poems because they are surrounded by so much silence. Indeed, reading a poem requires us to enter a place of stillness that throws us out of the forced hurriedness that we have created for ourselves. Silence provides its own sense of upheaval in our noisy lives.

I consider many poems to be lifelong friends. The links below will introduce you to a few that I hope will befriend you.

***

For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.

- Derek Walcott